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Saturday, January 29th, 2011
On January 20th I gave the keynote address to the 20th annual Southern Pinot Noir Workshop held in Hanmer Springs New Zealand. The invitation to speak is quite prestigious. Recent speakers include winemakers such as Tony Soter and Ted Lemon. This is exclusively a producer’s symposium so the audience is composed of your fellow vineyardists and winemakers only. It is both an honor and a privilege to address your peers. But it is also intimidating in some ways as you must be careful that everything you say is accurate and true. The title of the talk was “Terroir and Technique in Pinot Noir; Is terroir still the most beautiful question?” In this talk I reviewed both vineyard and winemaking changes over the 30 years of my career and related them to their effects on terroir. Both the questions and the answers were difficult, and in many ways the preparation of this speech felt like an examination of conscience. A review of the scientific basis of terroir and its relationship to Pinot Noir winegrowing was presented before the more general discussion that followed. The speech is available in an 8,000 word essay for those interested in the details.
- Larry Brooks, Winemaker
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Friday, October 15th, 2010
Harvest is on the down slope at this point. Except for Syrah at Salaal and on Edna Ranch Oceanside we’ve got everything harvested. Today we’re pressing Grenache for our 2010 Rosé. I’m guessing we’ll have about a week or two’s hiatus and then bring in the Syrah. A lot depends on the weather of course. For example today’s soaking wet fog didn’t further ripeness very much. There’s still plenty to do around the cellar. The Pinot Noirs just finished going down to barrel, and they look to be fine wines. They are dark, fresh and juicy. They may even rival the ’07s which is saying a lot. The early whites like Pinot Gris and Viognier are almost finished fermenting. I love the way these wines taste right at the end of fermentation. They are exuberantly aromatic; they perfume the entire cellar. With Chardonnay it is way too early to tell, you don’t have a good grip on Chardonnay quality until January or February at the earliest – sometimes much later. It is a shy wine or maybe coy is the better word. The heart of this harvest was very compressed. We only brought our first fruit in three weeks ago and we’re just about done – a fast and furious one for sure.
- Larry Brooks, Winemaker
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Thursday, September 30th, 2010
Today we bring in the last of the ’10 Pinot. It will have taken us exactly one week to drag in all the Pinot. I’m pretty sure that this is the most compressed vintage I have ever experienced. Normally the harvest would spread over two to three weeks. The Chardonnay looks like it might be equally compressed. It has been a long cool growing season and the unseasonable heat over the weekend really pushed things along. I am so happy to have the capability of night harvesting in a year like this. It was just too hot during the day the last four days to pick. But with our light rigs we were able to start picking at 3:00 AM and stop at 9:00 or so before the heat came on. The Pinot looks really nice so far though we don’t have a completely dry tank yet. The color is bright and dense and the fruit aromatic intensity is good. I’m cautiously excited.
- Larry Brooks, Winemaker
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Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Like most winemakers I have a love hate relationship to bottling. I love getting the wine in bottle, because it means my job is mostly complete, and there is a real since of accomplishment that the end of the yearly cycle of the task is ending. I also hate it because so many variables are at work and so much can go wrong. A friend of mine called it “your last chance to mess up the wine”, though he used a much cruder verb than mess up.
In some cases though the wine keeps getting better as you take it further along in the process. A good example this year is the Sauvignon Blanc which has been difficult since the fermenter. At every stage it has given me fits, and it has been a real chore getting it to taste delicious. Finally this morning tasting it at the bottling line, I could say to myself in all honesty, “This is a nice wine. It’s more similar to a French or New Zealand SB than a California, but it’s good.” That was both a pleasure and a relief.
I particularly like that we’re bottling a dessert wine this year. I only get to make one of these every few years, and it’s exciting to do stuff out of the routine. We used Viognier as the grape this year and I believe that with a little bottle age it’s going to be super. It’s pretty nice right now, which bodes well.
Mostly this time of year we bottle the fresh whites and the rose, but we’re also bottling our 2008 Syrahs tomorrow. This is a four or five months earlier than usual. The wines were so tasty in barrel that I felt like it was time to pull the trigger. These ’08 Syrahs are ridiculously concentrated from a flavor perspective, and inky dark. The only problem with them is that we have so little of them.
Posted via email from Tolosa Winery
Tags: bottling, bottling wine, dessert, grapes, sauvignon blanc, syrah, viognier, winemaker
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